Biden's Jurassic Ideas About How Jobs Are Created

Leadership: On a day when unemployment topped 8% for the 41st month in a row, it's worth noting Vice President Joe Biden told Ohioans Tuesday that "so-called job creators" don't build the economy. It explains a lot.

Campaigning in hotly contested Ohio, Biden told a National Education Association conference that big government spending strengthens the economy, not the private sector, the Washington Examiner reported. "We believe that the way to build this country is the way we always have, from the middle out .. .(to) invest in things that have always made our economy grow: innovation, research, development, infrastructure and education," the vice president said.

After that he launched a fusillade of class warfare rhetoric, painting Republican candidate Mitt Romney as a Monopoly-money plutocrat. Romney, he said, believes "somehow that those so-called job creators will make everything OK for the rest of us."

Combine that with President Obama's claim "the private sector is doing fine," and it's clear the White House is out of touch with the most basic facts about where jobs come from and why the economy isn't recovering.

In fact, "those so-called job-creators" are desperately needed to "make everything OK for the rest of us."

The private sector grew an anemic 84,000 jobs in June and averaged just 75,000 jobs in the second quarter, nowhere near enough to keep up with the population entering the workforce.

According to American Enterprise Institute researcher (and former IBD staffer) James Pethokoukis, it will take 219,000 net new jobs each month to bring the unemployment rate below 8% by Nov. 6's Election Day.

Biden thinks the solution is more government deficit spending on loopy centrally planned projects. In reality, the private sector, disciplined by a competitive marketplace, makes jobs possible, powers profits and fuels the economy.

Eighty percent of new jobs are created by the small businesses that Biden derides. And they just happen to be hit hardest by ObamaCare costs and a tax tsunami if the Bush-era rates are not renewed.

No wonder startups have slowed and business investment is weak. That will mean fewer jobs, something the biggest government spending binge in history can't fix.

Biden's crass, ignorant remarks about the private sector reveal a calcified jurassic attitude about what creates growth that can only go extinct if it can't change.

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